The prophet Samuel story

She tells it in order, and returns to it more than once. During a pregnancy she fell ill with a high fever, and in a dream a figure came to her: short, with something white on his head. He said, as she repeats it, that he was the prophet Samuel, and told her not to be afraid. In the morning she told the household; they said it was the fever talking.

In her eighth month he came again, and this she insists on: she was not asleep. She saw him beside her, awake. He told her she would have a son and must name him Shmuel, and said he would embroider the name on her pillow (as heard; parts of this passage are garbled in the recording).

The birth was very hard: twenty-four hours of labor, twenty-eight stitches, and ten days before she came home. It was a Friday evening. Still groggy after the delivery, she saw the figure once more. He swore he was the prophet Samuel, told her three times to call the boy Shmuel, and slammed the door.

Her husband's family wanted the boy named Menashe, after his grandfather: Menashe Sharabani, Saba's father, the same Menashe of Ephraim's interview. She did not argue much. She told them: you will call him Menashe, and I, my parents, and my friends will call him Shmuel. They knew, she says, that she does not lie, and they loved her; so the boy carried both names, the old Iraqi custom of two names arriving in a new country.

Years later the son, known as Menashe, struggled and was unwell (the details are garbled). He went to a rabbi and told the whole story. The rabbi's instruction was plain: go to the registry office tomorrow, erase the name Menashe, and keep only Shmuel, because the prophet Samuel stands in the middle of it. And, the rabbi added, your mother is an extraordinarily righteous woman; you must listen to her, and not only about the name. Since then, she says, all has been blessed. Menashe no longer appears on his papers, and the son told her afterwards: Mother, thank God, I am calm.

The vow, and Rami

From the naming she moves to a rule she repeats like law: never promise anything without saying bli neder, "without a vow." A vow left unkept, in her telling, does not let a house sleep.

The story she attaches to it concerns a promised name. Someone had vowed that a son would be named Rahamim (who made the vow is unclear in the recording). The child was called something else at first; then neither the child nor the household slept, and the dreams would not stop. A rabbi asked what name had been promised, said the promise had not been honored, and instructed them to change the name. The boy became Rahamim, Rami for short.

Rami is her son, and the name is her father's. Her father, who had daughters and no sons (matching Ephraim's account of Shula's family), died suddenly in 1954: a healthy man, still working, who asked her sister for a glass of water, said Shema Yisrael, and was gone. His name lives in her son.

Her proverbs

Scattered through the recording she recites sayings in the Jewish Arabic of Baghdad, laughs, and translates them herself. The Arabic on the tape is only partly recoverable, so what is kept here are her own glosses.

On self-respect: whoever sold you, sell him; you need not keep looking at his face. On origins: however much you do for a person, he returns to where he came from; each comes down to his own root. On pride: one who makes himself big is worth nothing. On haste: do not rush; patience mends. And one she tells against envy, about the woman who does not mind the pot burning so long as she can keep her eyes on the neighbor.

Dreams and signs

A recurring bad dream once plagued her. A woman she trusted told her to leave a glass of water beside the bed at night. In the morning the glass was found broken, and the dream never returned. She says she is not quick to believe, but after seeing that, she believes there are people with powers.

She recounts another dream and reads it herself: she and a companion went down into a narrow well-like place with water. The companion told her, your whole life is for the children, stop already; she answered that she cannot, that she always prays for them. Left alone and wanting to climb out, she reached into the wall and found the handle of a leather wallet, finer the more she looked at it, and in its small pocket a bag of green apples, four or five. She woke and read the dream: something new was being given to her; a tree and its fruit; and green means good. And she added: I will not change. I always bless them.

Blessings by telephone

The second half of the tape is not stories but life: message after message to her daughters and friends. How are you, how are the children; I called twice, call me back; we went to synagogue and prayed for you; a groom is proposed, a doctor, they say a good man, and her first question is whether he is Jewish; a wish for a granddaughter that she find a good Iraqi groom. Every call, without exception, closes in a cascade: health, joy, success, Shabbat shalom, I love you.

It is the same voice the notes and the passport could only gesture at: the girl from the sack warehouse in Baghdad, at the other end of a life, blessing everyone she can reach.